Graziosi Ardimenti

Founded in 2015 on the initiative of a group of musician friends, they specialized from the beginning in performing with historical instruments and according to the ancient performance practice of sacred and profane music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The ensemble has participated over the years in numerous concerts in Italy and abroad as part of important Early Music Festivals. Of particular note is their participation at the opening of the first edition of the Classical Brianza Early Music Festival in Monza and the Florilegium Vocis Baroque Music Festival entitled “East and West” in Bari. Baroque sees the Ensemble engaged in different programs ranging from Italian music, Vivaldi, Lotti, Jerace, to French music, Leclair, Boismortier, to German music, Telemann, Bach, Haendel.

Active in the field of research, teaching, and promotion activities of early music, they have recovered and transcribed scores from the repertoire of popular music of the southern seventeenth century and has dedicated themselves to the recovery and enhancement of personalities of the Calabrian musical seventeenth century and in general of the South, such as Leo, Vinci, Jerace, Pasquali. They recovered and re-proposed in the form of a theatrical show with music the events of the poet Isabella Morra and the Castellano di Cosenza Diego Sandoval De Castro, in collaboration with the Municipality of Valsinni, Matera, proposing it throughout Italy.

Soprano Barbara Tucci is a specialist in Baroque and Renaissance Singing; she has participated in numerous productions of operas in many Italian and art theatres including Taormina, Messina, Segesta, Cassino, Sulmona, Bilbao, Paris, Edinburgh, London, Bristol, Glasgow. She participated in the “Traviata a Paris” directed by Zubin Metha. She received the award from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers for the research work carried out on southern folk singing of the 17th century with the Ars Enotria Ensemble project of which she was a solo voice.

Fausto Castiglione is a cellist and gamba violist. He studied viola da gamba with Gioacchino De Padova, Cristiano Contadin and Paolo Pandolfo. He has played in Spain, Switzerland, South Korea, Russia, the United States, Germany, Scotland, Hungary, Norway, Malta, Greece, and Italy, in the most prestigious concert halls and various chamber ensembles. He has recorded several CDs with chamber music ensembles and orchestral formations. He has played with the Mediterranean Philharmonic and with the “Greece” Orchestra of the Province of Catanzaro. He collaborates with the Calabria Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rendano Theater Orchestra, and the Grieg Chamber Orchestra of which he is the first cello. With the baroque cello and viola da gamba, he collaborates with the Ensemble of Early Music of the Conservatory of Music in Cosenza, with the Cappella Musicale Corradiana, with the Confraternita dé Musici and with the Baroque Orchestra Santa Teresa Dei Maschi.

Francesca Sabrina Donato is the Crossman of the group; she specialized in the use of antique instruments under the guidance of Laura Pontecorvo. She has also performed concerts in the field of early music in different formations and various festivals dedicated throughout Italy and abroad. She is a musicologist and is dedicated to the transcription and revision of scores preserved in the southern funds. She was a finalist of the art prize in Vicenza in the early music section.

Pianist and harpsichordist, Donatella Chiodo has performed concert activities in the Baroque repertoire in various formations playing throughout Italy and abroad, specializing in harpsichord with Annalisa Martella, Maria Luisa Baldassarri, and bass continuo with Jesper Bøje Christensen. She is a journalist and musicologist and has published “Il teatro dei Cosentini”, “La romanza e la canzone napoletana nell’opera buffa of the late nineteenth century” in the volume “Alessandro Longo” of the Italian Society of Musicology, the “Dictionary of Calabrian musicians” of which he edited some voices.